


so no one told you life was gonna be this way

by lgbtbuck



Series: fictober 2018 [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fictober, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-24 13:38:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16176188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lgbtbuck/pseuds/lgbtbuck
Summary: fictober 18 prompt two: "people like you have no imagination."





	so no one told you life was gonna be this way

**Author's Note:**

> why was this so hard

Bucky, for one, thinks the dining hall food is absolutely disgusting. Bucky also thinks they spend way too much time here. There’s a permanent dent in this chair in the shape of his perfect ass, because they somehow always manage to sit at this godforsaken table. The freshmen glare at them for it. Bucky just glares right back. Like right now.

“Buck, stop. You’re gonna scare them,” Steve chides, bumping his shoulder.

Bucky just grunts, smirking at Steve.

Then he sees his plate, covered in the remains of his sandwich, and a pile of grapes. “Stevie, I swear to God, if you keep stealing all my good grapes…” Bucky goes to take them back, but Steve shoves a handful into his mouth before he can. What’s worse is he tries to smile around it, and _what’s worse_ is Bucky is endeared by his stupid ass boyfriend.

“Can you guys _please_ stop looking so goddamn in love for a few seconds?” Sam groans from the other side of the table.

“No,” Steve and Bucky say in unison, Steve still working around the mouthful of grapes. Bucky doesn’t even need to look to know Sam’s rolling his eyes and probably questioning his existence. So Bucky leans in to give Steve a kiss on the side of his mouth for good measure.

Sam mutters something presumably unsavory under his breath. Then, “Oh, good. Save me,” he begs to Nat and Clint, who have finally made their way to the table.

They fill the two remaining chairs. Clint always sits at the head of the table, which should be a topic of endless questioning, but it’s really quite simple: he gets up too fucking often.

After about their fourth week establishing themselves as friends, and at this table for that matter, they had finally had enough of the scooching and adjusting to let him through. They didn’t have an intervention, per se, but it was pretty damn close. Clint’s good about it, though, and always offers to get things for everyone else when he does inevitably get up, so really it’s a win-win, in Bucky’s opinion.

As it happens, Clint’s plate is already piled with food, but Bucky knows by now that’s only about twenty minutes of stationary Clint.

Nat shakes her head at Sam. “You’re gonna regret that,” she warns as she slips into her chair.

“Okay, so picture this,” Clint starts before he even finishes sitting down, and Bucky knows they’re in for a long lunch. Steve leans forward, amused, head resting in his hand.

“Oh, Jesus, here we go,” Sam gripes, flapping his hands around. “I need new friends.”

Clint just grins. “So, what if. There’s an alternate universe out there where life was just like Sims.”

Everyone at the table immediately groans.

Natasha leans back, eyebrows cocked at them. “See?”

“Hey!” Clint whines, hand clasped around his fork. “Hear me out, okay. So it's like a cartoon, right? Where we only have like, five outfits, and weird facial features that don't exactly look like a real human but we know they do.”

“Wouldn't that just be normal since there's no real humans in that universe?” Steve asks, eyebrows drawn together.

“Don't encourage him,” Sam interjects.

“Or are there people in that universe who can play the game?” Bucky asks now, part out of spite, part out of genuine interest, and part just to confuse Clint. Usually, when he shares his concepts, asking him a multitude of questions pokes holes in it, and he gives up. “ _Or,_ ” Bucky continues, “is there a whole other universe full of people who can only play the game and control the other universe's life?”

Clint thinks for a moment, hand on his chin. “Yes,” he decides.

“Yes what —”

“Okay, so anyways,” Clint barrels on, making Natasha snicker in her seat. He waves his hands around as he speaks. “We look lame, we dress lame, we have no real autonomy at all. Like, sure, we can enjoy setting a baby on fire or banging our neighbor, but we don't really get a _choice_ , ya know? It's like some freaky computer generated dystopia. _But_ we also don't have any responsibilities. Like, anything that goes wrong isn't our fault at all, right, because we're just a bunch of idiotic pixels.”

“But what about the free will option in the game? Like, that's a thing,” Steve points out.

“It's turned off,” Clint replies, easily.

“But —”

“ _Anyways_ ,”  Clint starts again. “And you can travel between worlds in this universe, ya know, like in the game. So imagine we had that capability, like us right now, and all the other universes out there, and you can just pop right into the Sims universe. Would you do it? Remember, no responsibilities but no autonomy, either.”

“So.....like _Wreck-It Ralph_ ,” Steve says now. “Traveling between games and universes and stuff.”

Bucky thinks he has a point, and tries to hide his smile behind his hand. But he taps his foot against Steve’s, and keeps it there.

Clint just looks positively offended. In fact, he looks like he's about to explode.

Nat intervenes, putting a hand on Clint’s shoulder. “Just answer the question before Clint has a conniption.”

Bucky looks to Sam, who is shaking his head at his plate of lasagna. Bucky looks at Steve now, and shrugs. Steve shrugs back before turning his gaze to the end of the table.

“Nah, sorry Clint. Believe it or not, I don't have the desire to set a baby on fire.” Steve, at least, does actually look apologetic about it.

“You're no fun,” Clint pouts. “But fair. Bucky?”

“I'm in,” he responds, shrugging again. “Sounds fun. And not having to do laundry or the dishes is real intriguing to me.”

“You already don't do your laundry,” Steve points out. Bucky throws the last grape at him.

“This is so stupid,” Sam says. “You're both idiots. A universe like that doesn't make any sense! It would die out in like twenty years.”

Bucky squints at him. “People like you have no imagination.”

“ _People like me?_ ” Sam repeats.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, leaning back in his chair. “Gov majors.”

Clint nods his assent. “Yeah, you're a party pooper.”

Bucky cups his hands around his mouth. “Party pooper!” he yells. Sam looks less than impressed. Bucky grins.

Clint turns to Natasha now, hopeful look in his eyes. “Nat? What about you?”

She doesn’t even pretend to consider it. “I'm gonna have to pass,” she says, and pinches his cheek. “But you're cute for trying.”

“Fine,” Clint harrumphs, tossing his fork back on the table, where it clatters. He slumps in his chair, then waves his hand at Bucky. “Guess Bucky and I'll just go and have a good time all by ourselves.”

“Oh, fuck no, Clint,” Bucky says. “I’m not going there.”

Clint frowns. “None of you ever appreciate my ideas,” he whines, throwing his head back.

“That’s not true,” Natasha says. “There was that one time.”

“Yeah,” Bucky tacks on. “With the thing.”

“And the other thing,” Steve adds, smiling.

“You said at that one place,” Sam joins in.

“Fucking bullies,” Clint says, glaring at all of them. “I don’t know what I expected anyways, of course Sam and Nat wouldn’t have gone. And Bucky would only go to some alternate universe where Steve is there next to him at all times.”

“I don’t see a problem with that,” Bucky says, leaning into Steve, who promptly throws an arm around his chair.

Sam stares at them. “That’s literally this universe, Clint.”

He’s not wrong, Bucky reasons. He and Steve came into this school together, after spending all of high school attached at the hip. They were a package deal when it came to making new friends, and so Sam became familiar with the both of them right off the bat. Natasha soon followed, reading them like the back of her own hand, and Clint soon stumbled upon them, and they all clicked. It was that easy. They all learned each other pretty easily and quickly, spending whatever time they could together. It was pretty natural, to let these other people into their lives. They just worked.

Steve and Bucky’s dynamic didn’t change much, either. Not even when their friends egged them on into dating, because _oh,_ that’s what was going on, yeah you’re all right, actually, thank you; dating Steve was the easiest thing in the world, because Bucky had already practically been doing it for the five years before that. And kissing Steve, he found, was his favorite thing to do. Bucky can’t be mad he gets to do that every day now, whenever he pleases.

In fact, he tilts his head up now, and Steve knows just like he always does, and meets Bucky’s lips for a kiss, curling his hand into Bucky’s shoulder.

And their friends groan and tease like they always do, and Bucky wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Okay, fine,” Clint amends. “A universe where Steve never does dumb shit. That’s where Bucky would go.”

“I know the multiverse theory dictates there’s a universe out there for literally anything and everything, but I gotta tell you, that one’s fucking impossible. No way it exists,” Sam counters and Natasha nods in agreement.

“I resent that,” Steve mutters, and Bucky takes his hand under the table.

“Nah, I know it’s out there,” Bucky tells them. “Sign me the fuck up.”

After that, their lunch goes on. Clint only gets up three times, miraculously. Natasha manages to write a whole essay while sitting there, intermittently popping strawberries into her mouth. Sam tackles his lasagna and comes out victorious, while reading one of his twenty assigned articles on his phone. Steve hunches over his sketchpad and does his drawing homework, and Bucky builds a presentation on the reign of Justinian the Great, eating some of the new grapes Clint brought him.

And so it goes, just like always.

 


End file.
